Album Review: billy woods, Kenny Segal - Maps

Of the numerous watershed moments in the decade-spanning career of billy woods, the rapper’s 2019 collaborative record with producer Kenny Segal still stands as the most impactful with regards to his overall popularity (such as it is). woods had been steadily adding to his renown (and that of his label, Backwoodz Studioz) for years at that point already, but Hiding Places was the first taste a whole new audience (and plausibly, a whole new generation) of listeners received of woods’ trademark style: elusive, deliberate, and frustratingly elaborate. A follow-up has been long teased and even longer desired by fans, yet both woods and Segal have been adamant that to call this a direct sequel would be reductive; indeed, the results (though familiar in part) carve out their own niche in a discography already full to the brim with ingenuity. As the cover art alludes to, Maps owes much of its motifs and anecdotes to the grueling, often barely profitable life of a touring musician, with woods’ adroit observations sketching out an international throughline of flights, car rides, and last-minute scrambles to the next venue. (On Baby Steps: “I actually took a $300 Uber to a show/Asleep in the back like Future, might as well be a Maybach/Showed up with nothing but a computer, let’s go”). From afar that may seem basic as far as billy woods concepts go, yet the careful listener will recognize upon closer listen not just the rapper’s inimitable brand of humour, but a focus on the interpersonal conflicts brought about by the stressors of separation and indulgence, leading to some of his most intimately revealing verses ever put to tape.

The opaque electronics that made up much of their last album are surprisingly absent on Maps; save for a quick descent into glitchy turbulence on the opener Kenwood Speakers, Kenny Segal’s jazz-adjacent compositions feel more approachable than much of woods’ prior catalogue, though trained ears will recognize that Segal is ceding nothing in terms of artistry. From the uneasy loops of Rapper Weed to woods’ unique brand of braggadocio on The Layover (“Big jar when you donate my brain”), blends of horns, strings, and keys define the instrumental palette this time around, trading the recognizable highs and lows of Hiding Places for a more consistent aural experience throughout. Standouts abound nonetheless: Blue Smoke strains at the periphery of those nostalgic soundscapes, a frenetic free jazz aside of escalating stakes (“Thick smoke, I took the honeycomb out the hive/No disrespect to your mans and them, but I’ll actually do it live”) mirrored at the opposite end of the record by Agriculture, its subdued (yet no less thoughtful) twin: “Cup bitter at the bottom, had to learn to toss the dregs”. Even more impressive is the initially ambient Babylon by Bus, with Segal amply layering the low end underneath a back-and-forth verse from rap duo ShrapKnel before seamlessly fading into climactic high strings as woods ends things off with his most quotable set of lines on the entire project: “Caught ‘em lacking on 9/11/I lie down like V.I. Lenin/People don’t want the truth, they want me to tell ‘em Grandma went to heaven”.

Between likeminded labelmates and a few ‘worlds collide’ moments that no doubt had fans salivating in the lead-up to this album’s release, the features on Maps demand more attention than on your average billy woods project (especially compared to its predecessor), even if woods is hardly willing to let himself be lyrically outdone without a fight. The sparse and ominous Year Zero leaves ample room for the record’s most anticipated guest, and Danny Brown stuffs his verse with more than enough absurd, hilarious one-liners to satisfy everyone who waited years for such a crossover to materialize. woods, again, is not one to be outdone, slipping some particularly cutting bars into his opening salvo (“My taxes pay police brutality settlements”) and later following up an adept Aesop Rock verse on Waiting Around with a barrage of evocative imagery: “We smoked outside in the darkness of the eve/Jaundiced moon, she had perfect teeth/Purple haze had your boy like ‘Come home with me’/She kissed my cheek, diplomacy”. The billy woods on tour we hear for much of Maps isn’t quite as cynical or misanthropic as on his and Segal’s previous effort, though the comfortable seclusion of Hiding Places is still reflected in woods’ determination to avoid the green room “if it’s too lit” (Soundcheck) and his ability to paint a remarkably serene picture of “smoking alone in a cardigan” while a post-Playboi Carti rager unfolds downstairs (FaceTime). A capable verse from Quelle Chris slides perfectly into sync with the slick production of the former cut, the bass still punchy enough to suit woods’ sly obstinance: “I will not be at soundcheck/But I might check in to keep ‘em honest/I reserve the right/Is it rap beef, or is it on sight?/Talking out they teeth, don’t even know what I look like”.

FaceTime, though, deserves its own echelon of praise; rarely do billy woods albums get pre-release singles, and the presence of one here alludes to both a steadfast belief in the inevitable success of Maps and a sign that woods knew he had something special on his hands with this track. Over a perfectly abstract beat of twinkling keys and tender horns (Kenny Segal again earning his flowers and then some), woods entwines two of his finest verses around the theme of distance: a large one between him and his partner while on tour, a shorter one between denial (“FaceTime declined, I’m trying to live in the moment like death row”) and eventual acceptance (“Something felt off before I even left/So when I saw the missed calls, I knew what was next/Didn’t have to open the text”). Equally evocative language is used to paint both a red Mexican sunset and a hazy concert afterparty, both burdened by poetics of confession and regret: “Really I’m just waiting on my phone to ping/I’m thinking ‘bout you when I’m supposed to be thinking ‘bout other things/I don’t go to sleep, I tread water ‘til I sink”. Almost as starkly exposed is Soft Landing, a second pre-release track that opens on another all-time woods couplet (“It’s 2:1:1 on the daiquiris/It ruins the whole day when my baby mother mad at me”) with plaintive guitars strumming all the while underneath. Floating through a carefree hook and more bittersweet reminiscence, woods’ bars still turn toward wars, prisons, and a nuclear winter; despite getting less airspace on this album than usual, his political insights remain all too acerbic, and there’s no heights one can fly to that truly escape the struggles down below.

 After traversing the globe (and returning home on the sedated NYC Tapwater), billy woods leaves most of his epilogue in the hands of his partner in crime ELUCID, whose extended verse on As the Crow Flies brings all the record’s themes home alongside the duo’s luggage: “I been tripping through coordinates, just have my cordless hot/A whiskey sour, ice, what it is, what it’s not”. All that’s left thereafter is woods’ short coda, offering up a rare unobscured glimpse into his thoughts on fatherhood (“I watch him grow, wondering how long I got to live”) as Kenny Segal’s wistfully constructed melodies fade out alongside his words. Despite lacking the demanding convolution of his most recent projects, Maps is in many ways a singular achievement in billy woods’ expansive canon, in no small part due to Segal one-upping their last collaboration and matching woods’ lyrical vision with an unimpeachable set of instrumentals that prove just how much potential the duo have left to manifest. Few of the other artists who pop up throughout can consistently hold a candle to the synergy between woods and Segal, and by the end of the record it becomes more than self-evident why this was the pairing that needed a second full-length outing; no need to mess with a good thing, unless it’s to take it that one step further.

9/10

Favourite Tracks: FaceTime, Babylon by Bus, Soft Landing, Year Zero